When it was time for lunch, Kada and Xard headed down from the mountain to join the other two. They looked like they had just bathed, so they most likely had taken a quick dip in the natural hot spring that the group had discovered a few weeks back. Drim and Phon were at the campsite they had established near the front gate. It was a simple setup of two tents and a campfire pit with log benches around it that Drim had made for them. Kada and Xard had teamed up to flatten the ground as much as possible, and Drim placed a soft moss beneath the area where the tents were erected. This made it fairly comfortable to sleep on, even more so than some beds.

Drim and Phon shared one of the tents and Kada and Xard initially shared the other. The Drazahs had offered to pay for them to stay at a hotel in town for now until more permanent accommodations were built, but they had declined. Pox normally stayed in the Drazah tent but Kada would often claim him for the night. At the moment, he was curled up on the lid of the pot dangling above the campfire. Somehow, he was heat resistant like the rest of them for reasons they couldn’t understand.

“Man that sure was some fight today,” Kada declared as she strolled into camp.

“You wouldn’t know what kind of fight it was if you had been working hard like you were supposed to. I saw the both of you watching us like we’re some kind of sideshow attraction,” Phon berated them as she picked up Pox off the pot and threw him at Kada. She then added more ingredients that she had recently chopped to the soup she was making.

“Sorry about that, but it’s just so enthralling that we can’t resist,” Xard added. “You can’t see anything like that anywhere else. Even special effects in movies can’t reach that level of intensity. A battle between Fiends is really something. Maybe we should record it and put it up online for the rest of the world to see. We could probably make some money if we sold it somehow, not that you two really need more of it.”

Drim had been laying on one of the log benches up to this point, seeming to have been taking a nap with one of his arms draped across his eyes. At that comment, he sat up, yawned, and said, “One of the scouts is probably recording it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we had a satellite dedicated to monitoring us at all times now.”

“Scouts? What scouts?” Kada asked while turning to Xard for answers, who just shrugged in response.

“Do you two specialize in being oblivious or something?” Phon sighed before she closed her eyes. “Let’s see… oh there’s only 31 scouts today. That’s much less than usual. Maybe they’re finally getting some time off, or maybe the CP is getting bored with us since we’ve been less active lately. It’s not like it’s totally their fault that we are or anything…”

“Wait, does that mean someone’s been watching us bathe?!” Kada yelled.

“Probably, I just teleport any of them away that are closeby when I go for a bath,” Phon responded with a hint of pride.

“As for the money part… well, we actually could use a bit more of it honestly,” Drim chimed in. “We’ve spent the vast majority of it on supplies, but the good news is we now have everything ordered that we’ll need, well, that we could think of anyways.” On cue another delivery truck drove through the gates, following the beaten path to the giant pile of supplies to unload its haul.

“Uhh… how much exactly did you spend?” Kada asked with clear worry in her voice.

Drim pulled up the tablet to his face that had been sitting nearby, after a second of looking through it he answered, “Looks like about 95%.”

Kada let out a noise that could only be described as a death-cry and then sobbed, “So much for my grand plans for Kada’s Private Resort and Water Park.”

“Hey, that’s enough money that we could still live off of it for our entire lives if we lived modestly. It’s probably more than the average salary worker would make,” Phon concluded. “If you want to get rich then do it on your own merits. Plus, I would have stabbed you a whole bunch if you actually attempted to marry Drim to get our fortune… Same goes for you Xard,” she added, waving a knife in his general direction.

The gang listened to Kada’s new life crisis caused by these sudden revelations for some time while the food finished cooking. Once it was done, they settled in for a nice meal, but just as they were about to take their first bites a familiar whirring sound loomed overhead. “Ugh, really? Do they have to do it during meal time?” Xard complained.

“They probably want to try doing it while we’re listlessly sitting around. They’ve tried every other time they can think of,” Phon said with a hint of annoyance. “Kada you’re up.”

“Ehhhh, why is it always me?” Kada whined. “Just because it’s easiest for me to do, it doesn’t mean I always want to do it. I’d rather just sit here and enjoy my soup, thanks.”

“Let’s see where they aim for this time,” Drim interjected. “If they aim for us I can easily take care of it with my vines.”

“No no, regardless of where it goes it should definitely be Kada or Xard either way as punishment for slacking off earlier,” Phon rebuked. “And Xard did it last time since Kada was in town. Besides, she's the one who wants the blasted things. She should always be doing it in my opinion.”

Kada continued to try to push the responsibility onto someone else as the noise got louder. It belonged to a CP skycraft that was flying above them. Skycrafts were flying machines in the same vein as helicopters but only moved forward using propellers or engines to allow for more speed. Currently, they were almost exclusively used by the military with a very miniscule number of smaller crafts that were privately owned. No public form of transportation using them had yet to be established. The Drazahs had been the first to use them in a practical application to drop their bombs, forcing the rest of the world to catch up quickly.

Since they were almost all for military use, they never had an official name applied to them. Rather, each one had its own code name for the model of the craft. The public consensus had landed on calling them skycrafts. Originally, there had been much debate on what to call them, even with some coming up with silly names such as ‘airplanes’ but those were swiftly shot down.

A few days after they had moved there, skycrafts routinely began to fly overhead. Nothing happened with them the first few times, likely either just scouting or testing to see if the Fiends would be hostile towards them. After two days of this, they dropped their first bomb on the compound which had definitely caught them off guard. They had managed to get Kada under it in the knick of time to melt it before it hit the ground.

Since then, at varying times and frequency, a skycraft would fly over and drop a random number of bombs on the compound. They had tried at all times: when some were sleeping, when some were in the bath, when one of them was off on a job, when Drim and Phon were fighting, when Kada and Xard were working on the mountain, and now when they were eating.

The first few after the initial one had been very easy to deal with. They just had Kada use the existing bomb to melt any that were falling. Once the liquid splattered onto the ground, she would reform them and add them to her growing pile. Unfortunately, after a few days their tormentors seemed to wise up. They began dropping bombs made up of randomized mixtures of metal. Each one was unique, even in the same bombing run. This meant that Kada couldn’t melt them with any of the ones she already had.

She could still use her Curse on them, but would have to touch them directly. Despite her protests, the others did their fair share of bomb catching too using their own techniques. Drim would use a slew of vines to slow and catch them, Xard would get under one and stop its momentum, and Phon would teleport herself onto one as it fell, grab it, then teleport back to the ground.

On one occasion when she was completely alone, rather than teleporting the bomb, she teleported the pilot to the ground before they could release it. This caused the skycraft to crash into the nearby mountain. After a severe scolding from Drim and several hours of forced solo cleanup by hand, she was never allowed to use that tactic again.

Even after the bomb had been released, the group was still nonchalantly bickering over who would take care of it. Phon seemed to have gotten fed up and covered her eyes. Kada vanished from the group, and Pox, who had been sitting on her lap, fell a few inches onto the bench. She reappeared directly below the bomb, falling on her butt since there was nothing to support her now. “Could you at least let me put my food down first!” Kada yelled back at them, just barely audible, still holding the bowl filled with her lunch.

Luckily for her, it was just one massive bomb today rather than several smaller ones she’d have to chase around. It was a wonder why they even tried the bigger ones at all anymore. It didn't matter the size if they never hit anything. Once, the Fiends had let a smaller one hit the ground intentionally, to see the scale of damage. It had left a decent sized crater but they had repaired it easily enough. This made them much less fearful, so they wouldn’t feel too bad if they missed one now and then, and only really panicked when they targeted the supply stack.

The biggest reason why they fussed over stopping the bombs aimed at nothing was so that their neighbors wouldn’t have to be shaken up by the explosion and the noise that came with it. The one today probably wouldn’t cause damage to anything important, but it would be beyond disturbing the peace. The group had wondered how the CP was causing so much chaos without suffering endless complaints and accusations from the citizens of Bisomote, until they noticed a circular that their taxes had been reduced to next to nothing for the duration.

Kada took a good look at her food and filled a spoonful, likely deciding if she could eat all of it in time. It seemed she had come to the conclusion that she couldn’t and placed it on the ground instead. She bent her whole body, now huddling over it like a mother protecting her child. Her body tightened up when the bomb hit her back. The tip of it melted, followed by the rest as it fell onto her. The liquid explosive splattered all over in every direction. When it was done, Kada sat back up in the metal slop and resumed eating her meal.

After she was finished, she reformed the giant hunk of mass destruction, hoisted it up, and carried it back to the campsite. By the time she made it back, she was gasping for breath and dripping with sweat. She clunked the bomb down onto the ground and sat on it to take a break. She said aloud, panting between each word, “That thing was mawhging heavy, couldn’t you have been nice and teleported me?”

Phon didn’t look at her and instead reached over into the cooler next to her bench. She pulled out a chilled drink, undid the top, and stretched out her arm, reaching in Kada’s direction. Just as Kada began to lift up her own arm to grab it, Phon let out an extremely fake sounding yawn and jolted her arm. She put the drink to her lips and chugged it down in one go. “Man that hit the spot,” Phon said after she exhaled dramatically. She then finally turned to Kada and addressed her. “It’s good exercise for you. Plus, if you learned how to control your Curse better, you could just melt it and make it follow you back, yes?”

Kada whined for a while over this response until Xard asked her, “So what’s this one going to be?” He was referring to the side project Kada had been working on. Since the bombs had been constantly piling up, Kada had taken the liberty of giving them a use. In her spare time, which she didn’t have a ton of, she had spent it building a hut composed of the bombs behind their tents. She had finished the main framework of it a while ago and had since moved on to making them into furnishings.

“Hmm…” Kada pondered as she stared down at it. “Maybe a nightstand… Oh, or a toilet! It would be nice not having to squat or go into town. Maybe I could morph it into a decently shaped toilet and build an outhouse around it. I don’t know how to do plumbing or anything, but I can definitely make a hole.”

◆◆◆

After lunch came hands-on training. This normally fell on Phon, who would teach them close quarters and hand-to-hand combat, but she had housekeeping she needed to take care of today; most notably organizing all the new supplies that had been delivered in the past few days. So, it fell on Drim to instruct them for the day. He mostly taught them survival skills, along with training them to use a bow. Neither of them had any plans to use one permanently, but it definitely helped refine their general accuracy, technique, and patience during combat. He would also take them hunting on occasion as well.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Today, he was teaching them all about fire; how to make it using natural elements such as handmade bows or flint, how to properly build and maintain one for long use, and how to cauterize a wound. The last one wasn’t really for their benefit. As a Fiend, due to their natural healing, any wound that would warrant cauterization would probably kill them outright. This was more in case they needed to patch up a Lesser or a human. They both seemed appreciative that Drim had used his own body for them to practice on.

When the sun started to set, Kada and Xard headed to town to pick up dinner and other supplies while Drim went to the hot springs to soak his body after a tough lesson. He didn’t get moments to relax like this often, so he’d probably make it a long one. This was due to the CPs annoying interference in their lives. They always needed to have at least one conscious person at the main compound at all times in the event of an airstrike.

Drim and Phon tried to have one of the two of them always be present even though Kada was the main one to take care of the bombs, but both were forced to be gone on rare occasions. This is why the two of them saw each other so little, since one of them was usually always either busy with training Kada and Xard or off on a job. At night, they would trade off keeping watch, so they never slept at the same time. Phon would usually go to bed immediately after dinner, and trade with Drim in the middle of the night.

This limited the jobs they could take as well, forcing them to do ones they could get to and back from in a single day. Only once had Drim stayed overnight, forcing Kada and Xard to join in on the lookout duties and forcing them to briefly reduce their training. It had also made it nearly impossible to spend time focused on team building since they had to do any of it at home. This had become quite the hindrance to their overall plans, making training Kada and Xard their main focus for the time being while they looked into ways they could alleviate the situation permanently.

After he was done with his bath, Drim decided to take a stroll around the perimeter. He could tell that Kada and Xard weren’t back yet due to his grass, and this was something he liked to do when he had time to kill. He really gained nothing from patrolling like this. It was for the benefit of the scouts. They hadn’t dared enter the compound yet since they’d been there, and he wanted to keep it that way; hoping that doing this display on occasion was helping in that regard.

When he got around to the gates at the front, he noticed that his trainees had just passed the compound’s threshold and decided to catch up with them. “Ahh hey Drim… Sorry, by the time I noticed, she had already done it,” Xard sighed. He was referring to the tied grocery bag swinging around in Kada’s hands as she walked, an unsettling sloshing coming from inside.

Drim let out a sigh of equal measure and said, “Whatever, I’ve stopped caring at this point. The food comes out just fine and I’ve definitely eaten worse things even if it stayed in that form.”

“Yeah, the impact of it has definitely lessened quite a bit,” Xard agreed. “It’s still mildly disturbing knowing that my food was a puddle of goop earlier… Oh yeah! Something I have been meaning to ask you, Kada. How does stuff you melt and mix come back out normal when you unmelt it?’

“Hmm… not completely sure on that myself, but I do have a theory,” Kada responded. “I think the molecules of the melted items must have some form of memory factor. That way, when I resolidify them they go back to normal. Them unmixing from other stuff is probably just an extension of that. I think that’s why it’s such a struggle for me to reshape and control stuff, since it naturally wants to go back to how it was.”

Phon was waiting for them back at their campsite. She was sitting on the ground, leaning her back against one of the benches with her arms resting on it, and staring off into the distance. Her yo-yo’s string was around her left middle finger, but the yo-yo itself was resting on the ground. Kada set down the bag when they got there and didn’t even untie it before unmelting everything. A stack of pizzas ripped out of the bag, topped with a few bottles of sodas and various other snacks and daily necessities. She then turned to Phon, who hadn’t shifted her gaze at all, and said, “Dinner’s here!”

Kada seemed clearly weirded out by the lack of response and shuffled over to her. “Hellooooo, not hungry?” she asked as she waved a hand in front of Phon’s face. She then gasped, turned to the others and started to yell, “Guys, I think Phon might be de—” Kada was cut off by a vine wrapping around her mouth.

“Be quiet, she’s sleeping,” Drim said before releasing the vine from her.

Kada looked back at the sleeping Phon and commented, “So she sleeps with her eyes open, huh… that’s… that’s weird.”

“Makes sense when you think about it,” Xard added. “Her Curse activates whenever she closes her eyes, so falling asleep must be pretty tough.”

“Yeah…” Drim lamented. “Right after we got back in contact, she wrote to me often about how hard it was for her to sleep, to the point that she was basically an insomniac. I imagine the reason she’s sleeping now is largely in part due to being tired from the fight today, but it seems she’s gotten much better. It may be at the point where she doesn’t even need the blinders anymore.” The two others stared at him with confused looks. He went inside his tent for a moment, grabbed something, then returned and showed the other two.

The object was a similar design to swimming goggles, but with no straps. They also had a strong black tint, similar to what a welder would use. “I had these made for Phon as soon as I could. It was a bit hard as a child to get someone to take my request seriously, though. This is actually her second pair since her face got bigger with age. These ones were made by Nathym, and are a bit more advanced than the originals. Basically, they’re blackout goggles, but emit a tiny amount of light; just enough so her Curse doesn’t activate. These ones also stick to her face on their own, so there’s no need for straps.”

Drim placed them on her face and said, “Even if she doesn’t really need them to sleep anymore, I’d still prefer she wore them so she doesn’t get anything in her eyes.” He then picked her up and carried her into their tent. Afterwards, the three of them sat down and enjoyed dinner together, making sure to save some for Phon to have when she woke up.

In the middle of eating, Kada asked, “So, how did you guys get back in touch anyways? Weren’t you on like opposite ends of Rathe?” She had all of this with her mouth full so it was hard to understand, but legible enough to get the gist.

Not being a savage, Drim chewed his food properly and swallowed all of it before responding. “Hand Guy,” was all he said before picking up a new slice of pizza and biting into it. He made it about halfway through before he noticed the looks the other two were giving him. “Wait, have I seriously never told you two about Hand Guy before?” The other two shook their heads slowly in response. “Huh, that’s weird. It’s not like we were keeping it a secret or anything.”

Drim went back into the tent again, and returned with a pencil, a piece of paper, and a roll of tape. He wrote ‘To Kada’ on the paper, then picked up Pox who was munching on an empty pizza box. Drim taped the paper to the back of Pox’s head, lifted him up and asked, “Can you deliver this for me please?” A hand appeared from behind Drim’s back, grabbed Pox, then slunk away into the shadows.

“For you, miss,” an unexpected voice said from behind Kada as Pox appeared from over her shoulder. “From an uncouth gentleman, who belittles my divine services so much that he would use them for a mere demonstration.” Kada took Pox and shivered as the hand over her shoulder slid back behind her.

“Sorry about that,” Drim said to the dim sky. “If you can hear me that is… So yeah, that’s Hand Guy. A couple of months after the Cosmic Boon I wrote a letter to Phon saying that I was okay, along with where I was staying at the time. After realizing I had no idea where to send it, I was just about to tear it up. Then, a voice said from behind me, ‘I can deliver that for you,’ and took the letter. I didn’t hear from him again afterwards, but a week later a letter showed up from Phon. Since then, any time I’ve needed something delivered, he’s done it for me.”

“I don’t know if he’s a Fiend or what. Just now, I couldn’t feel his feet touching the grass, and this is the first time he’s mentioned the word ‘divine’ at all. It also seems he only offers his services to me. Phon tried to have him deliver something too but got no response, and I could find no mention of him from extensive research. What I do know is that I’m eternally grateful to him. I don’t know how I would have found Phon again without him. There’s a big chance none of us would even be here right now otherwise.”

“What a heartwarming story…” Kada smiled for a moment, before shivering again. “That is super creepy and disturbs me to my very core. Seriously, what the hell? Does this mean that guy is stalking you at all times?”

“I have to agree with Kada on this one, it’s pretty creepy,” Xard added, scanning around. Drim guessed he was trying to find any source of Hand Guy. “I already know the answer to this because it’s you, but have you ever considered using him for nefarious purposes. Like, you could have him deliver a bomb or something. I’m guessing he could bypass even the tightest security. You also just demonstrated he can deliver living things. You could use it to infiltrate somewhere even Phon couldn’t reach.”

“Err, I’d rather not run the risk of falling out of his good graces,” Drim replied, scratching his cheek from being caught a little off guard by these questions. “Anyways, if you guys are done eating, let’s move on to Curse training.”

Curse training took place every night after dinner. Drim was in charge of overseeing this since Phon was just plain bad at it. She seemed entirely unable to empathize with how others view and control their Curses. On the rare times she had to fill in for Drim, she’d simply follow instructions left by him. It definitely wasn’t something that could be taught easily either. Since every Curse was different, each person had their own specific needs on how to cultivate it.

For Xard, they had initially worked on his ability to contain energy. Drim did this by repeatedly attacking him and then having him hold in the energy for as long as possible. Once he could hold in a large amount of energy for an acceptable amount of time, they moved on. He was now working on controlled energy input and output. This was achieved by placing both of his hands on various objects.

Under each of the fingers on his left hand was a mobile device belonging to one of the Fiends, and under his right hand was a bell. The training worked by having all the devices set to vibrate constantly. Then, Drim would instruct him to absorb energy from only one of the devices, causing the vibration to temporarily stop. Xard would then place all of his fingers on his right hand on the bell, except for the one instructed. He had to release the energy from the raised finger so the bell wouldn’t ring. It was clear that Xard wasn’t entirely sure why he was training in this, but Drim reassured him it would become apparent soon.

Since Kada had been a Fiend for a few years now, she was definitely much more versed in using her Curse. She had mastered the basic fundamentals of melting and unmelting to the point where the only thing that could be improved upon was how far she could radiate it. However, no matter how much they trained, she barely made any progress on that front. She was also quite good at the compression of stuff in a liquid state, so instead, they had decided to focus solely on reshaping things when turning them back into a solid.

Essentially, she had just spent the past month playing with rocks. She would melt one then do her best to reshape it and then resolidify it to cement the shape. They had gone through the basic list of shapes starting with a sphere. Since it had no definition, they had assumed it would be simple, but it proved to be one of the more challenging ones for her. Surprisingly, she excelled at making cones. After a bit of testing with each one to judge their difficulty, Drim had her working through them all from easiest to hardest until she mastered each one.

She would also end each night with trying to move a liquid rock as far away from her as possible until she was unable to control it anymore. This was to work on her overall range of control. Her radius for being able to melt things of a duplicate material to one she was touching was quite far, but being able to control it was an entirely different endeavor. On occasion, Drim would have her work on melting only one piece of a material from a bunch, but that was low on the priority list.

After they finished training for the night, the three of them sat and chatted around the dying campfire. Before Phon had fallen asleep, she had prepared a dessert to be cooked in a pot-oven on the coals of the fire. They were enjoying it while Kada attempted to get the other two to tell ghost stories with her, but neither of them would take the bait. Eventually, she gave up and retired to her bomb-hut with Xard heading into his tent soon afterwards. This left Drim alone to begin his routine watch in the dark.

He enjoyed this time alone, reminiscent of all the nights he’d spend camping out in the wilderness, lages away from the nearest human. He would use this time to either read something or train on his own. Since he needed to be quiet for it, his training usually consisted of simple strength exercises or Curse refinement. The most common exercise he did was to summon a bamboo ladder that stood straight up towards the sky. As he’d climb it, the bottom rungs would vanish and new ones would be replaced at the top.

For his Curse training, he’d usually either research up on new plants and try to make them, or look up an encyclopedia of common ones. He would then run down the list of them and make them one at a time. He did this to keep the memory of each one and how to make it fresh in his mind, not wanting to be stuck in a situation where he needed a particular plant and not remember the specifics of it. A lot of time was spent developing ways he could utilize or weaponize these plants in creative ways as well.

The time passed pretty quickly, and it was nearing the end of his shift, but he became too tired to keep doing anything productive. Now, he was just laying on the grass and looking up at the stars, doing his best not to fall asleep. I remember this view, but I don’t think I ever took the time to stop and appreciate it until now. A familiar voice filled his head, snapping him out of his relaxed trance.

“Oh, you’re finally awake,” Drim muttered with a hint of annoyance. “You were asleep for quite a while this time. Guess that’s what happens when you pull something stupid like that,” he said as he sat up and stretched. Listen Drim I-

“Shut it, will you?” Drim hissed. “You’ve already ruined the mood and I’m too tired to deal with you tonight.” He headed into the tent to find Phon already awake, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. He laid down in the sleeping bag next to her, and quickly drifted off to sleep.